To Russia with Love

A trip to Russia is like a trip to any gorgeous, cultured, European country – on another planet! That’s one of the best reasons to see Russia: Insights into a society that is playing catch-up with capitalism and giving modern life a pretty unique twist.

This is one of the most wildly expensive countries in the world! One where expectations of bribery are commonplace. There’s little or no tourism infrastructure to provide support to visitors (even visiting film crews) and together, this means there are a lot of pitfalls that can end up costing you a LOT of money if you’re on your own.

So traveling with a reputable tour company can save you a lot of headaches and cash. But you can have an even better Russia experience by taking a river cruise.

Here are my 5 reasons to choose a river tour company to see the best of Russia, like our Viking River cruise from Moscow to St. Petersburg.

1. FLOATING LUXURY HOTEL This is true of all cruising; you really are on a floating hotel, but in Russia, the benefits are even greater. We boarded the ship and it stayed in port in Moscow for a few days so we could explore the city before we sailed. Ditto in St. Petersburg, and if you do the math, a few nights and dinners in a luxury hotel in just one of those cities could have cost more than our entire tour! Plus all our land tours were included, with local experts to keep it easy.

2. THE CITY LIFE UP (TOO) CLOSE I’m not just talking about tickets to the Bolshoi and a bus to Red Square. Traffic in Moscow is worse than I’ve ever seen in any city in the developed world, and a lot of that bumper to bumper traffic is in uber-luxury vehicles, a reflection of the incredible amounts of money flowing everywhere in this pricey place. We saw a fender bender take place just in front of us. A very rich and dangerous looking person (and maybe a bodyguard?) got out of one the cars, and we thought we should be nervous. But after some chatting (no one even looked at damage, and certainly no one made a call!) cash changed hands, and everyone drove away. If that was you in a rented car, how smoothly would that have ended?

3. PLEASE…AND TANKS! Tour guides can make things happen. We’d heard about ‘military tourism’, you know those stories about people going to Russia and flying MiG jets that some officer somehow took with him when he retired from the armed forces and started a new business? Well, naturally, we wanted some of that action, and our friend from Viking River Cruises, Johan, made some calls. A couple of hours outside of Moscow, voila! A walled compound housing a couple of dozen tanks, plus an anti-aircraft gun or two, all available for film shoots, and… corporate team building events! We suited up, and with great anticipation, got the ride of our lives in a Vietnam War-era Soviet tank: cramped, noisy, jolting (do they have no shocks at all?), and completely exhilarating. You can’t do this at Disneyland, boys and girls!

4. THE INVISIBLE COUNTRYSIDE Most visitors to Russia see only Moscow or St. Petersburg, and leave without ever seeing Russia’s countryside. To call it massive is an understatement: Russia is the biggest country in the world, nearly twice the size of Canada (really!) so only glimpsing its political epicenter, or the ‘Venice of the North’ misses essential Russia. The cruise along the Volga-Baltic waterway provides at least a glimpse of the vast interior, incredible stretches of seemingly unpopulated shoreline (a lot like Ontario’s cottage country, before the cottages!), and makes a stop at historic Kizhi Island, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Here, you can see an ancestor of Russia’s iconic, colourful domed churches. Kizhi Island’s breathtaking raw wooden church is reputed to have been crafted without a single nail!

5. WHITE NIGHTS Both Moscow and St. Petersburg are so far north, they experience that midsummer phenomenon they call ‘White Nights’. The sun takes hours to set, and you’re still walking around the city in twilight at midnight! But nowhere are the White Nights more magical than on the water. The cruise’s route from Moscow to St. Petersburg takes us across some of Europe’s largest lakes, and the midnight sun setting for hours across the lake was a vision none of us will ever forget.

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